Such a declaration would in some measure suit persons who had acted much otherwise than Mr. Hastings.  When a man pleads ignorance in justification of his conduct, it ought to be an humble, modest, unpresuming ignorance, an ignorance which may have made him lax and timid in the exercise of his duty; but an assuming, rash, presumptuous, confident, daring, desperate, and disobedient ignorance heightens every crime that it accompanies.  Mr. Hastings, if through ignorance he left some of the Company’s orders unexecuted, because he did not understand them, might well say, “I was an ignorant man, and these things were above my capacity.”  But when he understands them, and when he declares he will not obey them, positively and dogmatically,—­when he says, as he has said, and we shall prove it, that he never succeeds better than when he acts in an utter defiance of those orders, and sets at nought the laws of his country,—­I believe this will not be thought the language of an ignorant man.  But I beg your Lordships’ pardon:  it is the language of an ignorant man; for no man who was not full of a bold, determined, profligate ignorance could ever think of such a system of defence.  He quitted Westminster School almost a boy.  We have reason to regret that he did not finish his education in that noble seminary, which has given so many luminaries to the Church and ornaments to the State.  Greatly it is to be lamented that he did not go to those Universities where arbitrary power will I hope never be heard of, but the true principles of religion, of liberty, and law will ever be inculcated, instead of studying in the school of Cossim Ali Khan.

If he had lived with us, he would have quoted the example of Cicero in his government, he would have quoted several of the sacred and holy prophets, and made them his example.  His want of learning, profane as well as sacred, reduces him to the necessity of appealing to every name and authority of barbarism, tyranny, and usurpation that are to be found; and from these he says, “From the practice of one part of Asia or other I have taken my rule.”  But your Lordships will show him that in Asia as well as in Europe the same law of nations prevails, the same principles are continually resorted to, and the same maxims sacredly held and strenuously maintained, and, however disobeyed, no man suffers from the breach of them who does not know how and where to complain of that breach,—­that Asia is enlightened in that respect as well as Europe; but if it were totally blinded, that England would send out governors to teach them better, and that he must justify himself to the piety, the truth, the faith of England, and not by having recourse to the crimes and criminals of other countries, to the barbarous tyranny of Asia, or any other part of the world.

I will go further with Mr. Hastings, and admit, that, if there be a boy in the fourth form of Westminster School, or any school in England, who does not know, when these articles are read to him, that he has been guilty of gross and enormous crimes, he may have the shelter of his present plea, as far as it will serve him.  There are none of us, thank God, so uninstructed, who have learned our catechisms or the first elements of Christianity, who do not know that such conduct is not to be justified, and least of all by examples.